Microsoft announces the winners of its first $100,000 HoloLens research grants

Earlier, Microsoft had challenged academic institutions to come up with cool ideas to harness the potential of Microsoft HoloLens. Now, Microsoft has announced the five institutions who have won those grants. They will receive $100,000 to continue to develop their ideas.

Here are the five institutions that will receive $100,000 and two two HoloLens Development Edition devices:

• Golan Levin, The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO, Carnegie Mellon University: Open-Source Investigations in Mixed Reality
• Emily Cooper, Wojciech Jarosz and Xing-Dong Yang, Dartmouth College: Augmenting Reality for the Visually Impaired with Microsoft HoloLens
• Joseph Gabbard and Doug Bowman, Virginia Tech: Collaborative Analysis of Large-scale Mixed Reality Data
• Andy Mingo, Tawny Schlieski, Nikki Dunsire, Shelley Midthun, J Bills, Clackamas Community College & Intel, HoloLens Curriculum for Trade-based Education
• Allen Yang and Professor Claire Tomlin, University of California, Berkeley: Immersive Semi-Autonomous Aerial Command System (ISAACS)

Microsoft named five groups as runners-up. They will receive two HoloLens Development Edition devices, but not the $100,000 grants:

• Lori C. Walters, Eileen Smith, Fran Blumberg, Robert Michlowitz, Alexia Mandeville, University of Central Florida: Memory Lens: A Dynamic Tool for Capturing Societal Memory
• Wen Liu, The University of Kansas: Stroke Rehabilitation
• Preeti Gupta, American Museum of Natural History: DinoLens: Seeing an Unseen Past
• Pamela Jennings, Center for Design Innovation: CONSTRUKTS: Augmenting design processes with interactive holograms using the Microsoft HoloLens
• Carol LaFayette and Frederic I. Parke, Texas A&M University: Extending the range of human senses: Ultraviolet and ultrasonic perception with Microsoft HoloLens